


Terrifying

by Retreat_Now



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: And Dina Should Be Scared, Dina Wants To Figure Ellie Out, Ellie Isn't Normal, F/F, Fictional violence, Scary Ellie, They Should Be Terrified Of Her, Violent Ellie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-15 09:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18496015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Retreat_Now/pseuds/Retreat_Now
Summary: Ellie and Joel are a mystery to the people of Jackson County. The odd couple, a father and daughter combo of quiet, intense strangers with a mysterious background. Joel, the brother of Tommy that not one single person had ever heard before he showed up, and Ellie, the little girl he brought with him.Dina's known Ellie for two years, but she doesn't know her at all.





	1. Puzzle Of Unknown Pieces

Ellie is a mystery. A mystery to the people of Jackson County, and a mystery to Dina even more.

Two years she's known the tall, awkward girl, and two years she had known of her before that. Despite that, Dina knows next to nothing about Ellie, or her guardian for that matter. She knows that Joel isn't Ellie's father, and she knows that Joel is Tommy's brother, though not a soul in Jackson County had even heard his name for all their time knowing Tommy. Dina knows that Ellie is from the Boston QZ, and that's where she met Joel. That's all she knows. They're pieces to a puzzle, but they're 3 pieces, none of them fit, and not a single one is a corner or edge piece. 

Some days she'd hear stories that sent a dull ache through her head. Everyone in Jackson County is a survivor, but they'd tell hushed stories about Joel- years ago, about the day he arrived. Like ghost stories. And yet, Dina would listen. When bandits attacked the dam some odd years ago and killed some people, Joel was there. Like a tornado, they'd say, he ripped through them. When Dina looks at those soft brown eyes, and the smile of that aging man, she struggles to imagine a growling monster, dragging a bleeding raider across a cat walk like a human shield, firing volleys of bullets at anything that moved. And yet- that's what she hears. Rage. Pure, weaponized rage.

But it's gossip, Dina tells herself. She sees Joel differently after, nonetheless. He's quiet. Doesn't talk much. It puts people off. His eyes are sharp, observant. She knows he's watching everything, because he notices her watching him. And they stare, trying to figure each other out. She gets the feeling he got more from her than she from him. From watching Joel, however, Dina gathers one thing. He'll never feel safe. His eyes watching, his hand ready at his side, his front to every entrance. Joel is always prepared for everything to fall apart. Dina knows nothing about his history, but she starts to feel like she knows him. She can feel she's solving a puzzle, but it might not be the one she thought it was.


	2. Coming Together

Dina isn't there to see it, and she can't tell if Ellie doesn't want to talk about it, or just doesn't know how to tell a story, so she settles hearing it from Jesse. He was excited to tell her, after all. She didn't talk to him often, not after they broke up. If any words were directed at him, they were scalding hot with sarcasm and laced with hurtful intentions. Now, however, the young man had her full attention, eyes slightly widened and hands grasping a steaming cup of tea. 

Ellie had been in a fight, and Jesse was the only person she knew who had been there to see it go down. As he spoke, her mind wandered slightly, pushing into her memories and making connections she wasn't sure she wanted to make. "She just kept beating him, and beating him. I tried to drag her off, but she was an inch away from turning on me too." Jesse said. "It took her old man showing up to pull her off. Haven't seen either since." Dina has never known Ellie to be violent. Not like that. That rage, that pure, unfiltered rage was familiar. The more Dina thinks about Ellie, it seems the less she knows about her. That "shy quiet girl" could be framed as an ever-ready explosive, ready to go off once the fuse is lit.

Dina sees more Joel in Ellie than she'd like to. Joel would often come back from patrols wounded, bloodied. It was normal, and each time he seemed unfazed. He'd sit down, look across the way, and stare. Content, almost. Calm. The calm before the next, inevitable storm. When Dina gets to Joel's house, she sees Ellie the same way. A different light is all it takes to turn a beauty into a brutalizer. Ellie's eyes flicker up at her, intense and calm all the same, her fingers rubbing idly at bruised and bloodied knuckles. The way her hands shook slightly didn't escape Dina. Adrenaline. Anger? Rage left over, wanting to escape. On anything. Anyone. Dina steps forward anyways taking a seat on Ellie's bed, right next to the taller teenager. Her hand reaches out, hesitating briefly before she placed it across Ellie's arm in a comforting gesture. Dina can feel the muscles tense up, the bicep flexing under her palm. Ellie's arms are strong, and Dina doesn't enjoy the split second of her mind imagining those strong arms striking at her, colliding with flesh. 

She knows Ellie wouldn't, but as she sits on Ellie's bed, reaching her hands out to wrap out the bruised, shaking fists, she can feel the intensity radiating off of the young woman. Dina fears it, and whenever Ellie smiles at her from across a room, or whenever their hands brush and both are enveloped in a suffocating silence, she can see it. She can feel the intensity, a thunderstorm in the distance. 

And that thunderstorm is growing again.


	3. No Right Pieces

Jackson County was fairly secure. It's location ensured that there weren't many routes it could be attacked by, leaving certain routes to watch out for. Though attacks were semi-frequent when Jackson County was growing, as it's populace and protection expanded, the attacks became less and less common. After the attack on the dam, and Joel and Tommy's unexplained ride out into the woods after, there weren't many bandits left to attack the dam. From the stories Dina had heard, with the attacks on the forest trail and the attack on the dam, they'd probably killed around 30 people, if not more. It still shocked her, even now, to think that so many people could group together like that, to plunder and raid. It didn't seem maintainable. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe that's why those guys were dead and the citizens of Jackson weren't. 

Despite it's apparent instability, these raider groups could and would form in large numbers, wave after wave of trash crashing over the county like a tsunami of filth. It was terrifying, to have your day suddenly be uprooted. To hear screams and gunshots out of nowhere, and see the dirty and masked figures of the bandits come over the walls like the worst of roaches. Hell unleashed, her entire world turned upside down as screams echoed out and the entire of Jackson County seemed to try and get itself together to defend against the intruders. Dina was in the danger zone, practically immediately in sight of the first few who bounded over the southern wall. She froze, only able to watch as a mud-covered man met eyes with her, a crooked smile shaping beneath a matted beard. With a hitch in her breath, she had turned and bolted, gunshots echoing out as civilians and those guarding alike took fire on the intruders who made their way in, group after group after group.

Dina ducked between two housing units, her shoulder brushing against rough sheet metal, heart pounding against her chest as if it were bounding to escape, as she was. The teen let out a sharp cry, hands moving over her head while she ducked low to protect herself from the glass shards of a fire bottle that collided with the wall of the house. She could feel the heat blast against her back, like a wave of hot air, and had she been a foot backwards, she'd be aflame, she was sure. Too panicked to cry, her throat tightened and tightened, and Dina couldn't swallow or breathe, like she was suffocating. She needed to hide. To get away. The pure, unfiltered chaos continued in the background, deafened by the pounding of her heart and the squelching of her hastened footsteps against the newly wet dirt and mud. 

The sky was overcast, clouds covering the town like a blanket of grey, but it wasn't nearly dark enough to miss the chaos and death only 20 meters behind her. Dina ducked past the housing units, carrying herself through the shadowed area between the homes and the wall. She needed to get far from this, to get out of the way and let the ones with the guns do the fighting. The sounds of dry laughter and heavy footsteps stopped her in her tracks, originating from further down. Raiders must have looped around and climbed over the eastern wall to flank the group fighting to the south. Dina knew, if she kept going, she'd run right into them. Dark eyes flickered between the housing units, and her body shot out desperately to the closest one, hands shaking as they tried the handle. Unlocked. Her frame shot through the doorway faster than she thought possible, shutting it behind her and locking the individual hatches hastily. As the situation settled, and her body collided with the floor from her momentum, ass resting on untreated planks, Dina's immediate panic gave way some, allowing her to breathe properly and letting the tears roll down her face in steady, hot streams.

The moment of escape was short lived, Dina's breath catching in her throat and staying there as footsteps slowed to a stop in front of the wooden door. The door knob rattled aggressively, sending Dina scrambling into the bedroom of the home. The door shook with a BANG and a grunt, the wood of the door frame letting out a god awful groan. The bedroom door closed behind herself, but as her fingers ghosted over the door's lock, Dina heard a loud crack of wood and a grunt from a man. The SLAM of the door being busted open was audible to her, even over the thunder of each heart beat. She recoiled back, abandoning the door and practically diving under the large queen sized bed, blankets tossed to the side by someone who likely didn't want to wake this morning. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, whoever lived in this home wasn't here. She was all alone. As her relatively small frame hid itself under the bed, Dina let out the breath she didn't know she was holding, her brown eyes focused on the bedroom door, intense.

The quiet creak of wooden floorboards under a weight more than her own. The heavy breaths of a man that she could only imagine smelt like rotted teeth and decay. The soft clicks of a gun being shifted. Dina had faced raiders before. She'd faced infected before. She had hid before, hid for her life, fought for her life. But this feeling of a deep, uneasy sinking in your abdomen, while all at the same time, something within your heart and throat fluttered- pounded. SHOOK with fear. The type of fear to freeze you in place. It was a hard feeling to describe, but not impossible. What was impossible, Dina thought, was the feeling that came when she heard the second person in the house. And the third. The grumble of commands, and the sight of muddied boots coming through the now open bedroom door.

Even as she was likely seconds from death, Dina couldn't help but analyze her own emotions. This sort of fear. Maybe it was to cope. Maybe her own thoughts were there to distract her of the man's knee pressing to the hard wooden floor, giving him room to kneel down and peek below the bed. Maybe she analyzed things like this, tried to figure them out, to hide from her own feelings of dissatisfaction with her life. Maybe she looked at the broken smile of the bearded man, his bright blue eyes, and thought how pretty those eyes would be in the right context because she didn't want to be afraid. Maybe Dina spent her days watching Joel, watching Ellie, because the sight of this man's bright blue eyes were like a void of horror and unexplained evil. Maybe Dina was afraid, because that evil, that lust, that anger, that glee, that giddiness she could see in those eyes were unexplainable. She was afraid because this was a harsh reminder that not everyone could be put together like a puzzle. Some people were just wired different.

And as his thick, calloused, dirty hand reached out for her face, Dina let her mind focus on her surroundings instead. Untreated wood. Uncomfortable against her skin, she probably had a splinter or two in her palms. The stink of mold- maybe water damage, in the house. The creaks and shuffling of the wood throughout the house, audible despite the chaos just outside. The movements of three people in the other room. One more than before, just entering. The fact settled on her mind like a feather, weightless. Unimportant. One more raider. Until a yell filled the air and the hand drew back in a panic, and that feather was suddenly a needle in her mind, a sharp sting of attention. They were fighting.

Dina's eyes focused, watching the muddied boots of the man with the bright blue eyes rush to the door in an effort to help his friends. Cries of pain and exertion carried themselves to her ears, and she couldn't help but flinch and recoil at the sound of metal scraping against bone. Through the open door, from under the bed, she couldn't see much but the flurry of foot steps as another cry filled the air, wet with blood and gargles- a body slamming into view not soon after, his jaw cleaved open and his tongue lolling out, twitching intensely. His eyes wavered, filled with fear as he heaved and choked on his own blood, which poured out of his butchered mouth and throat in waves, soaking into the wood. The sight made bile rise in her throat, though with closed eyes and a surge of confidence, Dina crawled out from under the bed, trembling. Another body hit the floor with a thump, and there was a cry of rage.

She could see, just through the doorway, the man with bright blue eyes, though now she could see them- staring at the attacker. Fear. She could see fear. In that moment, it brought some sort of comfort to her that these men of mismatched pieces could feel fear. That there was something they were scared off. Dina held onto that comfort with an iron grip as cracks of thunder filled the room, the smell of gunpowder and smoke filled her senses, a tingling pain in the bridge of her nose. Her face scrunched up at the smoke, ears ringing from the loud bangs of the firearm that she now noticed the man possessed. One thousand thoughts ran through her. Had he killed them? Was he going to kill her too now? Could she take him now that he was alone? Should she even bother trying, Dina thought.

She didn't get the chance to decide as a body barreled, headstrong into the blue eyed man, crashing together with a blue. His fat body slammed into the corner of the doorway with a crack, unfortunately from the doorway, it seemed. Light reflected off of the machete that swung through the air, cleaving into the man's shoulder blade. Dina was perceptive, but as she watching the blade, the dull blade, hack through the floor and crack the bone, slipping between the pieces and pushing deep into the man, she really wished she wasn't. Another bang as the gun went off again, firing wildly into the roof as the man screamed in horror and pain, the machete rearing back and cleaving across his wrist. The blade carving against his flesh, peeling it back as it dragged down his arm, the metal clashing against the gun and sending it flying out of his hand and to the ground. The machete continuing, blade cleaving across his palm, cutting his thumb off- no. Nearly off, hanging from whatever bone and tendons remained.

Another hacking motion, to his head. A kill shot, Dina figures. But it's wild, sloppy, enraged, cutting down his scalp and slicing unevenly through his ear. As if to compensate, the machete is pushed to the side, forcing the man's screaming head against the doorway. A palm pressed against the machete's dull side, forcing it- slowly, Dina notes- upwards and through his head. She watched the blade be forced with strength, leisurely, through the man's mouth, carving around some teeth and cutting through his cheeks like discarded fat. It continues upward with shaking hands, and eventually, Dina can hear his strangled screams cut short, his trembling eyes, bright blue, empty. She doesn't know what to say, so she doesn't.

Dina can't look at her, her savior. She can't look at the blood, the mess, the hacked up and splintered bones, the- She vomits. She hates it, and her face flushes red with heat, and confused emotions and general revulsion. Dina curls over and vomits, at the foot of the bed. It takes her a moment, worried words falling on her own deaf ears. Bright green eyes stare, with confusion. Ellie doesn't get it. She turns to look at the taller girl, to look at the machete clutched in her hands. To look at the blood soaked in her clothes. To look at the expression on her face. And she turns and lets loose bile again, over the floor. Ellie's hand settles on her back, but she recoils.

Dina has always been able to figure people out. She'd thought she'd figured Ellie out. Rage, unfiltered, pure rage. She knew it was there, she'd heard about the fight, she knew what Joel could do. Had done. She knew the father and daughter weren't very different. But she wasn't prepared for this. The girl's bright green eyes conveyed so much, so open- like windows. Bright green eyes filled with worry. Fear. Anger. Lust. Pain. Joy. They'd be beautiful in the right context. Elie and Joel were puzzles that had no right pieces. Ellie was a harsh reminder that not everyone could be figured out. Some people were just wired different.

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all criticisms wanted. Please comment and share your opinion, it makes my day and helps me improve. Thank you!


End file.
